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Sales Focus: Open Your Eyes

All of us get caught up in our day-to-day activity. We react to ringing telephones, walk-in clients, and the crisis of the day. It is easy to become distracted while shuttling kids around, cleaning messes, and just keeping things together.

Our daily activity and the demands we perceive have been thrust upon us become so overwhelming time seems to pass in the blink of an eye. Hours, days, weeks, months and, even years, melt away with an accelerating quickness.

We act as if this phenomenon is out of our control. We shrug our shoulders and say things like: “Time flies!” or “Things happen in the blink of an eye.” or “They’ll be all grown up before you know it.”

Truth be told, you control this. Not time, of course. But what you do with time.

We focus on things that really don’t matter.

You can combat this by taking a step back and seeing things for what they really are.

Make a list right now of the things in your life that are really important. Start with the basics:

Your health and the health of your family

The stability of your home

Your financial security

The love you have for those closest to you and the love they feel for you

After you reflect upon these things for a minute, you realize you’ve had your priorities all screwed up.

Stop and think about what’s important. Think about the reason(s) you work and you’ll realize everything else is much less important.

You can’t slow time down but you can spend it more wisely.

Think: “Is this the best possible investment I can make with this hour?”

If the answer is: “No,” you need to make some changes.

Here is an exercise to help crystalize this for you:

Keep track of your time for one day. The next day review each hour. Ask the time investment question.

The exercise is designed to get you thinking about time investment in advance.

You’ll probably need to do this exercise once a week for a month before it changes your mindset.

Trust me – this is one of the most important things to master.

You can always make more money but you cannot make more time.

This moment is perishable.

Here are three other articles you can digest to help improve your sales focus: